Raleigh E. Colston

Raleigh Edward Colston (1 October 1825-29 July 1896) was a Confederate States Army Brigadier-General during the American Civil War and a colonel in the Khedivate of Egypt's army.

Biography
Raleigh Edward Colston was born in Paris, France in 1825, the adopted son of a French noblewoman and a Virginia doctor. In 1842, Colston was sent to study in the United States, living with an uncle in Berkeley County, West Virginia. He turned down his uncle's advice to become a Presbyterian minister, instead graduating from the Virginia Military Institute in 1846 and serving as a guard at John Brown's execution in 1859. When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, he joined the Confederate States Army and became colonel of the 16th Virginia Infantry. On 24 December 1861, he was promoted to Brigadier-General, and his performance at the Battle of Seven Pines elicited criticism, but his friendship with his fellow VMI professor Stonewall Jackson led to his commanding a division at the Battle of Chancellorsville. Colston lost a third of his division in battle, and Robert E. Lee removed Colston from command. In early 1865, he was sent to guard the railroad junction of Lynchburg during the Siege of Petersburg. In 1873, he was invited by the Khedivate of Egypt to serve as an Egyptian Army colonel and a professor, and he joined fellow expatriates Charles Pomeroy Stone and William Wing Loring in serving Egypt. In 1879, he returned to the United States and wrote about his experiences in North Africa, and he died penniless in Richmond in 1896.